Ghosts
by quinnovative
Summary: Tag to 3x05. A rewrite of the final scene, exploring Lena's coping and how Kara and Sam could help her. (Possible hints at Supercorp if you look for them, but could be read as friendship, too)


**A/N:** This fic is a rewrite of the final scene of 3x05. I had a lot of feelings and thought Lena's coping needed more exploration so I wrote this piece and debated posting, but figured I might as well go ahead since I finished it. Also I'm just pretending the Sanvers issues aren't happening, because I can't deal with them not being together.

Hopefully you enjoy :)

* * *

 **New Message (1)  
Kara Danvers: Lena's missing**

Sam gets the text and then her phone goes silent for an hour.

For an hour, she sends back responses, asks how she can help, paces around her living room, repeats her attempts for an update, and tips back a bottle of wine.

She's toying with the car keys in her fingers, debating going out to search herself, when she jolts upward, turning to the buzzing noise that pulsates from her kitchen counter. Sam sweeps up her vibrating phone.

 **Kara Danvers: Got her**

Sam's shoulders fall in relief and she lets out a sigh, slumping over against the counter and dropping her head into her hands.

Her phone buzzes again.

 **Getting her checked up right now. She's in rough shape.**

Sam straightens up, types half of a reply before deleting it. She lets her thumb slip up instead and dials Kara.

"Hey," Kara voice breaks through the silence.

"Hey, what the hell happened after we separated? Where are you guys? Is she okay?"

Kara lets out a shaky exhale, long and weighty. "She will be," Kara says but her voice is still quivering and soft. "They're most worried about the possibility of a concussion and she's in emotional shock for sure. She's um—she's not doing so well dealing with it… with it all, but," Kara breaks off and Sam can hear her try to reel in her breathing, slow it down. "But she's okay. She'll be okay."

"Do you want to bring her here? I've already seen on the news that her place is swimming with the press and protestors still."

"Yeah, uh yeah. That sounds good. I'm going to talk to her and see if I can get anything and then I'll text you."

The text comes after fifteen minutes. Half an hour later there's a firm knock on her door and Sam pulls it open. She has a thousand words on her lips, begging to fall at once but then Lena's there slumped into Kara's side and the CEO's skin is a ghastly white and her eyes are foggy and lidded and her hands are trembling, and Sam feels the words cycle back into her brain and get lost.

"Hey," she says softly instead and her voice is a gentle, steady hum as she pulls the door open further and lets them in.

Lena looks at her through misty green eyes and her body is taut with wound up worry and anguish, and not a single word passes through her pink downturned lips.

"Hey," Kara says back with a tightlipped smile that stretches too hard and fades at the corners.

"Is there anything I can do?" Sam asks and locks the door behind them, shifting her weight on her feet in the silence and twisting her fingers together.

Kara shrugs and her eyes are watery, lip pulled between her teeth as she tightens her grip around Lena.

"It'll be fine," Sam says. She pulls the best smile she can across her face and gives Kara's shoulder a quick squeeze. "Maybe water or something to eat? Or a warm shower?"

Kara nods. A deep breath rattles through her lungs. "Yeah. Yeah that sounds like a good idea."

"Lena," she prompts and the woman doesn't shift or respond. Her eyes cling to something distant and intangible—something of ghosts, and histories that haunt.

"Lena."

A million miles away.

A heart that yanks with every beat.

Murkiness and sickness and failure, failure, failure.

"Lena, hey."

Kara uncurls her arm from around Lena and rubs it up and down her back.

Lena tilts her head and the movements are slow and monumental, as though she's physically fighting a force greater than gravity when she leans away from Kara to look up at her face.

"Hey," Kara says and the tears are blinked away, her voice smooth.

Lena strains against those same insurmountable forces to fill her lungs with oxygen.

"How about you drink a little water?"

Lena gives the slightest indication of a nod before Kara steers her to the counter, eases her into a seat and stays pressed to her side as Sam slides a glass of water to Lena. It's almost the same as hours earlier, when she'd believed with certainty that she'd been responsible for poisoning children. It's the same, almost. Her name is cleared now and yet, her limbs are heavier with dread and loathing.

A compounded mess.

The water climbs up the edge of the glass in her shaking hands, sloshes against the sides and rebounds to the middle in waves and back again. Sam and Kara pretend not to notice. Pretend Lena's fingers aren't quivering, pretend she isn't choking down the liquid, pretend not to notice that she can't look either of them in the eyes.

It's a fight to get herself out of bed some mornings and now it's a fight to finish a glass of a water and a fight to breathe and a futile battle to try to still the shaking hands that accompany her racing, racing heart.

"Want to try to get some food in your stomach?" Sam asks and slips into the stool beside Lena, waits for permission before she puts a hand on Lena's knee.

Lena shakes her head and her stomach twists because there's already bile rising in her throat every time she looks in mirror, and it still feels like there's alcohol sloshing in her empty stomach, making her dizzy and blurring the edges of her vision.

"What about a warm shower and then you get some rest?"

Lena nods and let's herself be guided into the bathroom on shuffling feet and shaky legs. She nods again when they ask if she'll be okay in there alone and then she nods when they double check and nods once more before they finally relent and the door clicks closed and the silence gnaws at Lena's heart.

She drags herself into the shower and feels the repetitive thumping of heated droplets unravel her, and the sobs crack out of her chest when she's going through the motions of rinsing conditioner out of her hair. The cries stay as consistent as the torrents pouring from the showerhead, and the sobs outlive the shower altogether and when she steps out and pulls on the new set of leggings and a sweater Sam left on the counter Lena looks up at her reflection.

Lena looks up and stares into her own eyes and the sobs crack her open.

Minutes pass before there's a soft knock on the door. The knocks are Sam's and the voice is Kara's that says Lena's name.

Lena's lips part without her consent and the broken croak of a voice that fills the room feels foreign on her tongue. "I'm sorry," she chokes out. "I'm, I'm s-sorry. I'm—"

"Lena, please let us in," Kara says. It doesn't matter that Lena's voice is hoarse and small and speaking the words of a shattered woman, because Lena's talking and Kara's heart lurches with the suddenness of it all, with the desperation to be there beside her, sharing in the suffering.

It takes three tries, but Lena finally fumbles the door open and when she does, she stumbles into Kara's arms.

"Hey, oh Lena, hey it's gonna be okay," Kara says and receives Lena into an embrace.

The Luthor's knees go weak and Kara tightens her grip. "Come on," she whispers softly and supports Lena as they walk to the couch. She collapses into Kara's side when they sink into the couch and clings, because Sam is sweet and incredible and a phenomenal friend, but Lena needs Kara like skyscrapers need steel to stand and atoms need to fill their valence shell to be stable.

"I was going to kill him," Lena says and buries her face into Kara's shoulder, fills her hand with a fistful of blonde hair. "I was going to kill him."

"You don't know that," Kara whispers and presses a kiss against Lena's wet hair. "You can't know what you were going to do when it really came down to that."

Lena shakes her head against Kara and a sob wracks the CEO's diaphragm.

"And even if you had, Lena, it would have been wrong in a sense and I wouldn't endorse it… but God, Lena I think I would understand."

Lena keeps shaking her head. She screws her eyes shut and Kara can feel the soaked lashes brush her skin. "I'm just like them." Her voice cracks.

"No," Kara says steadily, firmly. "No, Lena, you are so much better and so much more."

Lena goes quiet and bites her lip. She pulls back just enough to wipe her tears, looks up at Kara into her ocean eyes.

"I promise," Kara says.

"I'm with Kara on this," Sam adds and Lena turns around to face her.

Sam smiles and comes around the back of the couch, a light purple blanket folded neatly in her arms.

"Cold?" she asks and Lena gives a small nod, shivering as she thinks about it.

"Thank you," Lena says as Sam spreads out the blanket and wraps it around Lena's shoulders as Kara slips her hand into the Luthor's. She squeezes back and keeps it there.

"Of course." Sam smiles. "You know, in this household we used to say this blanket was magic. So I'm just saying…" Sam shrugs dramatically and makes a face.

Lena laughs softly, it's surprising and airy and light, and it sends relief blooming in Sam and Kara's chests.

"It's true," Sam says as she settles onto the couch beside the pair. She points to the silvery polar bears dotting the fabric. "It was Ruby's favorite when she was little. The polar bears have special powers, they help you fight off anything that hurts or anything that feel bad or nightmares."

Lena gives an amused grin that raises her red cheeks. "Is this so?" she asks and traces the lines of Kara's hand beneath her.

"Scientifically proven."

Lena laughs again, stronger this time even though it's followed by a sniffle. She sinks back against Kara, feels the rise and fall of the blonde's chest. Kara tangles her fingers in Lena's hair, running through it gently.

Sam turns on the TV, controls the remote with one hand and brushes her thumb steadily across Lena's knee with the other.

At one in the morning, in a friend's living room under a magic blanket illuminated by the white glow of the TV, Lena's in pieces. But those fractured fragments are pushed back together by the two people pressed at her sides, by the two women whose warmth chases out the chill of ghosts that resides in her bones.

She tilts her head into the crook of Kara's neck, and lets her eyes close.


End file.
